Some bodies were said to be thrown onto a nearby golf course as the plane fell.

Shreds of clothing, apparently from other passengers, were found in locations 15 miles away.

Investigators looked everywhere to find why Pan Am Flight 103 dropped from the sky in a rain of fire. And everywhere they looked, it seemed they found more signs of the tragedy.

Police and FBI combed the Chapel Cross Plant, where the British military stockpiles weapons-grade plutonium eight miles from town. They tromped miles of rolling hills. They centered their attention on the black cinders of an oval-shaped crater, 100 feet wide and 20 feet deep in the village's southwestern corner.

By mid-day the list of missing local persons had risen to 22.

At the town hall, now a temporary mortuary, the body count stood at 150.

"A rescue situation does not exist anymore, " a spokesman at the Royal Air Force at Edinburgh had said early today. "We are just recovering bodies."

Police closed off six wreckage sites. While helicopters hovered overhead, teams of forensic scientists and crash investigators -- at least one from the National Transportation Safety Board in Washington, D.C. -- visited the locations.

Traffic continued to creep along two lanes of highway running south from Glasgow. Mangled pieces of metal lined the road, which was covered with a thin layer of dust. For several blocks, shards of glass replaced windows in the neighborhood.

The gas station where the jet exploded into a ball of fire no longer exists. About 40 stone houses were obliterated. Only a smell of kerosene lingered. Police in rain slickers milled around the crater, scooping up bits of debris.

Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had been here. The Duke of York had visited. The queen of England was said to be "deeply shocked by the appalling disaster."

By 11 a.m. EST, the American TV networks were just arriving. Vacancies at the 24-room Queens Hotel were gone. Proprietor Ron Matthews had grown used to describing the "violent shaking" he'd felt when the plane hit.

Sheila McDonald told the Associated Press she was delivering Christmas presents to a friend's home on a hillside overlooking the 2,500-resident town when she heard "a horrible droning sound."

"This V-shaped object just seemed to come flying through the air . . . It was the wings and front section of an aircraft . . . Another part came just behind and all around seemed to be red dots like sparks, " she said.

Another resident saw it, too.

"There was a terrible explosion and the whole sky lit up and the sky was actually raining fire. It was just like liquid, " said Mike Carnahan, who was a few hundred yards from wreckage that came down Wednesday.

"All I could see was flames and fire, " Carnahan told British Broadcasting Corp. television. "I could see several houses on the skyline whose roofs were totally off, and all you could see was flaming timbers and what was left of the houses."

Police and rescue vehicles were held up by traffic as roads leading to the site became jammed with motorists trying to get a glimpse of the disaster.

The jet's blue-and-white nose section, its Clipper name "Maid of the Seas" clearly visible, landed three miles short of Lockerbie, near a church in Tundergarth.

The crash, at 2:19 p.m. EST, was the worst ever in Britain.

A team of crisis counselors who recently worked at an oil platform explosion were said to be en route to help the grieving.